BV Larson has a good story idea but he desperately needs an editor and help from someone who can write female characters. The women are all either bipolar Tweens or whores. He repeats explanations of things like the ring communication devices over and over again. Explain your scifi tech once per book. Phrases Mr. Larson can no longer use:

- crossed her arms under her breasts (just say she crossed her arms)

- too bad (used too often)

- lady love (nobody says that)

He also has turned the main character into a cartoon of itself. He's kind of a pompous buffoon at this point. Maybe this series should have been told from the point of view of multiple characters. The main character's musing on military leadership are the product of someone whose watched too many John Wayne movies. Not realistic at all.

I can't except the protagonist, who is supposed to be a collage professor, never learns anything new. People do learn from their mistakes. And if they don't, they get replaced. This protagonists never learns anything. The books in this series are the same stupid mistakes over, and over. In each book he comes up with no significant improvements in tactics. There are SO MANY better options of attack that never get so much as a thought. I think this author is not smart enough to think of them himself. It is OK for a civilian person not to be able to think of better tactics. But, the commander has thousands of people under his command. Some would be tacticians who would be coming up with ideas, tactics, and better weapons. This story contains almost none of them. The best he seems to be able to do is bigger ships and to build macro weapons. Nothing actual new except a fighter plane that did not seam to have any new weapon on it. This author should be asking for help with ideas and tactics from others because he can not think of them himself. The protagonist's stupidity, and lack of anything but basic tactics was OK in the first couple of books. He was just a school teacher. He should be getting better and better over time, or he would be replaced by those around him. There is no way a tacticianal idiot would be allowed to continue in command forever! Since he was a professor, he would have the mental capacity to learn from his mistakes, and from the good ideas and plans of others. But, the stupidity of the commander stays the same through all the books. I can hardly keep listening to this book. There are just too many horrible stupid strategic mistakes! Not to mention, a defecting high ranking solder would be put in a cell for an interrogation period, then only later, she would be given a pension and sent someplace she could do no harm. After so many attempts on the commanders life, she would never be able to sneak a poison into the most secure fortress in the human arsenal and attack him with it. The author seems to forget they would have very good weapon scanning abilities. I think the author has had a hot looking woman try to kill the commander in every single book. Every time they almost succeed! Nobody would be so stupid to leave themselves vulnerable to every hot chick that comes along from earth where his most deadly enemies are. They always seem to bring along weapons, or bombs, or something. None of his people think they might be dangerous enough to search them for weapons, or anything dangerous.... It is just too Stupid!

Let me cut to the chase. It was almost maddening to listen to Riggs make stupid decisions. By modern leadership standards he is horrible. He was a great tactician up until now. But he makes awful strategic choices based on, of all things, his naivety! He refuses to learn from past mistakes. It is infuriating listening to him make a choice that you know is going to come back to bite him in the ass. And those once cold hearted choices he had to make early in the series to save humanity? He can't do it now because he is willing to risk everything to work with (save) untrustworthy alien races!

And it is just bad writing when the author forgets which characters were on which side of an argument! Riggs will be arguing against his staff over something (because he always knows best right) and not 2 minutes later he is suddenly arguing the same case his staff was trying to make. That is just bad.

I read the bad review and listened anyways because I am now more interested in the overall story than the main character. I sure hope the next book is better.